


Hat Trick

by nimblermortal



Series: Proud Parent of an Honor Roll Student [2]
Category: Norse Religion & Lore
Genre: Brother-Sister Relationships, Brotherhood, Fluff, Gen, Hats, one bad word used literally
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-31
Updated: 2015-01-31
Packaged: 2018-03-09 18:49:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3260582
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimblermortal/pseuds/nimblermortal
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Loki spends ridiculous amounts of time making plumed hats for Jörmungandr, regardless of how big Jörmungandr grows. Jörmungandr... wears them.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Hat Trick

For a long time, Jörmungandr thought his father wanted a bird child.

There was nothing wrong with being a snake child, his father told him repeatedly and sometimes at length. Less than wrong! Jörmungandr was the most beautiful of his children, which Loki would say without prompting whether or not he was reassuring Jörmungandr. Jörmungandr felt a little sorry about this, since it was Hel who was supposed to be beautiful, but Hel had other strengths. Strength of will; she was the one who had inherited their father’s obstinacy. Jörmungandr just had all the beauty Loki had missed, and since Loki had never gotten to enjoy it, he was determined to make sure Jörmungandr was not just the most beautiful but also the best dressed everywhere he went.

There were not a lot of things a snake could wear.

Loki had made - or tricked elves and dwarves into making - many complicated garments for Jörmungandr when he was a baby; they had carvings and paintings of Jörmungandr in everything from a sleek, glossy slip to some artfully draped, subtly winking jewels that had Sigyn and Angrboda united in arms that Jörmungandr should never wear again. Loki was stiffly informed that they were inappropriate for a child or most adult company, despite the fact that in his day-to-day life Jörmungandr wore precisely nothing.

The thing that stuck, because Jörmungandr actually enjoyed wearing them, were the hats.

Hats were great fun. Most of the clothes got in the way of moving and got mussed up very quickly. Hats, though, hats were stylish, and they could be elegant or ridiculous or jauntily cocked, and best of all, they could be feathered, which was a stunning pinnacle of achievement and a combination of every delightful thing a hat could be.

So Loki kept making him hats, every year when he was quite small and then every ten years as he got bigger. The hats, of course, got correspondingly bigger, as did the feathers. Loki called Jörmungandr his feathered serpent or his bird child, nicknames that made Jörmungandr wriggle with delight. There was an entire wall of Jörmungandr’s room covered in hats his father had made, bands and cloth and feathers in garish colors or subtle ones, elegant or rippling or weighed down with fruit charmed never to rot - Jörmungandr could have tossed it to the ground and had a snack if he wanted to, if fruit was a satisfying meal.

The year he got that hat, it dwarfed him and reached all the way down to the part of him that stretched out along the ground. Three hats later, it was too small. Jörmungandr began to find this embarrassing.

He got a little more self-conscious about the hats as he got older. Partly because he had a lot of hats. Partly because it started taking an embarrassing quantity of material to make each hat. For a while, he managed to persuade Loki, blushingly, that he wanted austere hats, simple ones, but it was hard to trick the god of lies for long, and when Loki found out, Jörmungandr received a hat bigger than all the others, and even more garishly decorated than the fruit hat, a hat so ridiculous that even Jörmungandr felt embarrassed about wearing it. He almost never did, and then at the last moment he put it on when going to see Fenrir.

Fenrir gave a yip of laughter when he saw that. “Don’t let Vali catch you wearing that!” he laughed, and leapt at Jörmungandr’s head to try to knock the hat off. If he had been Hel, it wouldn’t have worked; Jörmungandr was sheepishly certain that his hats now weighed more than Hel did. Fenrir, though, was the biggest of Jörmungandr’s siblings and easily able to knock it over; Jörmungandr could even hiss his irritation and wrestle with Fenrir, if carefully, before bullying him into helping Jörmungandr put it back on.

“You look ridiculous, you know,” Fenrir told him, tongue lolling as he leaned against Jörmungandr’s side and panted after their exertion. Jörmungandr decided he did not need to say that Fenrir looked at least as ridiculous when he let his tongue hang out like that.

“Well, unlike some people, I’m not hung up on my honor,” Jörmungandr said.

“You’re hung up on your hats.”

“My hat is hung up on me.”

“You’re a bastard,” said Fenrir, who hated puns.

Jörmungandr considered this, tongue flicking outside of his mouth. “Yes,” he agreed, “but so are you.”

“Never denied it. Narfi’s the only legitimate one.” He spoke lightly, but Jörmungandr knew how it irked him, Fenrir, the warrior child, the child of strength and honor, that he was not granted that light.

“Narfi’s the boring one,” he said.

“Don’t let Dad hear you say that,” Fenrir said, and gave a huffing bark. “‘I love _all_ my children,’” he said in a whining falsetto. Fenrir was much better at impressions than Jörmungandr; but then, he had vocal cords.

“Haven’t seen Dad in a while,” Jörmungandr said casually.

“He’ll turn up. He always does.” Fenrir stood up and looked around. “Fancy a hunt?”

“You _always_ want to hunt.”

“You _never_ do.”

“Once a month is good enough for me,” Jörmungandr said. “I’ve no interest in killing for pleasure.”

Fenrir dropped his jaw and huffed. “Beauty child indeed. Courtier child. Useless layabout, hanging around the edge of courts waiting for other people to give you furs and trophies. Sleeping with -“

“Insulting me is not going to make me join your hunt,” Jörmungandr said. “You wouldn’t want me to anyway. I don’t fit in the underbrush anymore, I’d scare off all your prey.”

“That could also be fun.”

“Get Vali to go with you. Vali’s always up for hunting. He’s worse than you are.”

“Could be worse: I could be lazy. You grew up fat, didn’t you?”

“I grew up beautiful,” Jörmungandr corrected him. “As beautiful as Dad always said I would be.”

“And still wearing Dad’s hats. You’re really not going to come hunting?”

“No.”

“Fine then.” Fenrir loped off toward the mountains, where he was most likely to find challenging prey. He probably wanted to be alone, then; if he really wanted company, he would have asked Vali to come. But he’d stuck around long enough to tease Jörmungandr about the hat, which was kind of him, and he’d helped Jörmungandr put it back on. There would probably be teeth marks in it until Dad’s next visit.

Fenrir was a terrible influence. Jörmungandr never called Loki Dad except when he’d been visiting with Fenrir - and Dad was as bad as Fenrir about teasing him about it, too. Well, Fenrir must have learned it from someone. Jörmungandr took a last look at Fenrir, streaking across the land in a ripple of tooth and muscle, and turned to go, giving a fond series of short, sharp hisses.

“Jörmungandr!” Fenrir howled. Jörmungandr turned to look; Fenrir had stopped, turned, one paw raised as he looked back at his brother. “The hat. Suits you.”

He knew Jörmungandr would never be able to make himself heard across this distance. Perhaps he had planned it that way - but Fenrir was not much of one for plans, especially where people were involved. Best just to take the compliment at face value. Jörmungandr gave a deep, grave bow in Fenrir’s direction, which seemed to satisfy Fenrir, who turned back and continued streaking across the landscape.

Jörmungandr set off toward home. It was getting late and the stars were rising. He liked the stars; they pricked across the landscape like dots of scent on his tongue. So the hat suited him, did it? He wondered what that might mean, that such a huge, ridiculous hat would look right on him. That Dad kept making him hats, and he kept wearing them. Or that Hel refused to wear one, as if it might hide her whole being instead of the part of her hair.

Well. It was what it was, whatever that was, and for tonight there was the sky, and the sea, and the stars, and a snake to slide across them, plumed in night.


End file.
